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Tau have a problem in 9th edition. They are only effective in one phase of the game (shooting) and can't be fixed by improving their shooting.

I suggest the following:

"When the last Brother Falls" 0CP strategem that can be used in the combat phase. In either players combat phase if a Tau unit is destroyed, up to 3 CORE units in range and LOS can fire all their weapons at the enemy unit that killed the Tau unit.

The ability to use Tau shooting in the combat phase under limited circumstances helps. Allowing them to break the normal flow of the game and do it in the opponents combat phase helps even more.

Gun-fu "melee" profiles on Crisis suit weapons so you're not utterly boned as soon as someone makes a change.

I suggest the following:

"When the last Brother Falls" 0CP strategem that can be used in the combat phase. In either players combat phase if a Tau unit is destroyed, up to 3 CORE units in range and LOS can fire all their weapons at the enemy unit that killed the Tau unit.

The ability to use Tau shooting in the combat phase under limited circumstances helps. Allowing them to break the normal flow of the game and do it in the opponents combat phase helps even more.

While tau aren't what they were, they still have something of a reputation for being frustrating to play against. A couple of editions ago, they'd intercept you if you came in from reserves, ignore your cover if you tried to use it, and outshoot you if you kept your distance (and weren't playing scatbike eldar.) More recently, the 5+ overwatch has been seen as being very punishing towards melee armies, and in 9th they've retained that overwatch ability while everyone has has become much worse at overwatching. My concern is that a rule like this will be a "feels bad" rule that feeds into that bad reputation despite the current status of tau and of melee armies.

"Oh, you managed to get your daemons across the table? Time for a free shooting phase. Oh. You managed to kill one of my units? Time for another free shooting phase."

People didn't love it when ynnari did it. I don't see them enjoying being on the receiving end of this.

 dadx6 wrote:
Tau have a problem in 9th edition. They are only effective in one phase of the game (shooting) and can't be fixed by improving their shooting.

Couple things here.

A.) If the issue is that Tau need to do more things in more phases, why not give a shot in the arm to the units and mechanics that have been ignored for a few editions? Give kroot an extra attack and some options that make them a decent (but not amazing) melee component to your army. Let strength 5 vespid have a reason to be deployed. Bring back some form of JSJ so that tau can feel mobile again. Get rid of kauyon as a static aura buff, and replace it (and maybe mont'ka) with some IG style orders that let suits JSJ or re-enter reserves. Make the tau Doctrine equivalent a choice between a two-stage Kauyon or Montka. Something like...

* Kauyon: Until you declare the second stage of your Kauyon, attacks made against your units suffer a -1 to hit unless the attacker is within 12" of their target. When you declare the second stage of your Kauyon, units may fall back and shoot at a -1 penalty (the trap has been sprung; the bait escapes.)

* Montka: Until you declare the second stage of your Montka, you may designate a single unit as a Critical Target during each of your command phases. Until your next command phase, you may reroll to-wound rolls of 1 made against your Critical Target. Once you declare the second stage of your Montka, your units may advance after falling back. and automatically advance 6" (don't roll a d6.) (Target eliminated. Let's get out of here.)

^Just spitballing.

B.) I don't necessarily disagree with your diagnosis, but I do feel it's worth pointing out that it's okay to not do your damage in the psychic or fight phase just like it's okay for a stabby army to do most of their damage in the fight phase. So long as all armies have a reasonable level of lethality, it's okay if that lethality is mostly happening in one phase.

I've not played as or against tau since 5th so this is likely to contain some errors and misconceptions!

Tau always used to have the Markerlight gimmick, which was really cools and made them a really unique faction to play, and that's something I would look to expand on (I don't know if markerlights are still a key part of T'au or if they are just a hangover from previous editions).

I would make Markerlights give the following effects (to be chosen by spending a markerlight token, which is assigned by hitting with a markerlight):
1: +1 to wound allowance for the phase (EG for 3 markerlight tokens, ghazzie can take 3 more wounds this phase than normal)
2: +1BS for a firing unit shooting the target unit.
3: Ignore the effect of light or heavy cover (takes 2 to ignore both)
4: Firing hunter-killer missiles without line of sight

I'm sure there would be other things which can be triggered by markerlights.

Then I'd add (if they don't already exist) markerlight drones to accompany the big suits, so they have their own source of markerlights with which to work. I would also add an "auxilliary markerlight" option for bigger suits so they have one built in, for redundancy, which fires at BS4+.

I would also like to see a bit more of their other races (vespids, kroot, new ones, perhaps!) to bulk out their fight phase.

Bizzarre as it may be, they could have a close-combat drone-suit, which is remote controlled and very hard to take down, with a set of cool new pistol-guns which would have 2 profiles (the same profile, but one used in melee) which would be for intercepting the enemy. It could have good BS/WS, until the controller (who is a character) isn't within 48", when it becomes automated and gets lower BS/WS, making it less scary.

 some bloke wrote:

I would also like to see a bit more of their other races (vespids, kroot, new ones, perhaps!) to bulk out their fight phase.

I would also love to see the other races fleshed out a bit. I feel like using the other races to cover the lack of interaction in other phases might be a good way to go about it. Kroot need a serious rework and could be decent CC units, not OP but worth taking at least. Shapers should be HQ, and some kind of Brood Alpha or Lesser Shaper as unit leaders. At the very least if you want to make them fodder then price them like fodder.

I also feel like Breachers stole Vespid's thunder. You could have given the variable range/strength band to the neutron blaster and made Vespid survivable/usable for light/medium duty in CC. Instead GW made option number three for Firewarriors, ensuring fewer people take carbines lol. I wouldn't mind using vespid as a heavy/assault style troop either. Take Infinity's Combined Army's Caskuda and Iskaller models for example. Big mean flying bugs that can get stuck in. Give them another wound or feel no pain because their bugs that keep on trucking when you pull a leg off. Give them ignores cover when shooting or assaulting because they see into a different spectrum. I don't know just some random thoughts off the top.

I know Tau are not really supposed to know too much about the warp or be psychic. But the psychic phase as an abstraction could allow for Ethereals or another race to have some indirect actions such as unit buffs/debuffs or board control stuff. But then its easier to just do that at the beginning of the turn as it is currently I suppose. One could say there's an argument that the psychic phase is unnecessary and could be rolled into "beginning of turn" and "shooting phase" "moral phase" actions like they used to be

Make markerlights matter again, since the rest of the army basically depends on them to actually function in a cost effective manner. I propose something like this (actual ML values or abilities would likely need to be rebalanced):

Markerlights are now used in the psychic phase instead of the shooting phase. Each model with a markerlight may place a markerlight token on a visible enemy unit within 36". (No need to roll to hit, auto hits)

During the shooting phase, each unit shooting at an enemy unit with markerlight tokens may choose to spend markerlight tokens to gain up to 3 the following abilities:

1 ML token - The unit may reroll 1's to hit
1 ML token - The unit may reroll 1's to wound
3 ML tokens - The unit's BS improves by 1
2 ML tokens - The unit may ignores the effects of cover (light and/or heavy)
1 ML token - Seeker missiles fired by the unit do not need line of sight and add +1 to the hit roll (seeker missiles deliberately synergize especially well with MLs)
3 ML tokens - Improve the AP characteristic of the unit's shooting attacks by 1
2 ML tokens - The unit ignores the penalties for moving and shooting heavy weapons or advancing and shooting assault weapons. The unit may fire rapid fire weapons even if they advanced, but subtract 1 from the hit roll.
2 ML tokens - add 3" to the units weapon ranges, or 6" if the range was originally 24" or greater

Basically there will be a lot more markerlight tokens, but you go back to spending them for each unit so that you have to use them wisely and encourages focusing fire on priority targets. It also allows you to access most buffs without a substantial investment in markerlights unlike the current system.

To make pathfinders more viable, give them the following rules so that they are not immediately shot of the table:
- pathfinders add +2 to their armor save for being in light cover instead of +1 (or give them 4+ armor back)
- if pathfinders did not move or fire a ranged weapon (markerlights do not count) on their previous turn, subtract 1 from all hit rolls from ranged weapons against them.

Jetpack keyword allows fall back and shoot, which suits desperately need back.

Add in a suicide explosive melee drone, that allows damage to be done in the assault phase. Basically a drone that does something like D3 strength 8, -2 ap, Dmg D3 attacks and then is immediately removed as a casualty. This way you could combine these drones with a couple shield drones that could theoretically assault a unit off an objective and hold it ( as long as there is minimal return fire)

Give tau secondary objectives that focus on denying objectives to the enemy (gain VPs for each enemy unit destroyed in range of a VP), maybe even give a tau a special rule for primary objectives that focuses more on denying them to the enemy than taking them themselves. (Such as substitute out the 5 VPs for holding 2 or more objectives for one where the tau player gains 5 VPs for removing an enemy off an objective the enemy previously held and did not reclaim during their turn)

I would highly advicate that markerlights are definataly not used as a conditional metric for making our shooting good enough.

We already have deathwatch being immune to them, and rock paper scissors while typical of GW makes the game very poor experiance as you either rofl stomp everyone else or get roflstomped in that matchup.

Not to mention that markerlights at the volumes mentioned only come via a very small unit selection which just gets point and deleted as their paper thin.

XV8, and XV9's both need JSJ
XV8 need to be costed with some sence

Railweapons need to have +1 to hit and the current FTGG and Forgeworld stats 2 shoots and D3+3.

Riptides Y'vharra and R'vanna's are just over costed (assuming Riptides go to 4+ invulnerable saves aswell.)

Plasma needs to be D2
Pulse rifles need either AP or D2

Kroot need 3A or 2A and Ap

Wait, back up. Tau are/were broken? When? How?

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Wait, back up. Tau are/were broken? When? How?

Have you played 9th edition? Tau are basically bottom of the barrel because castling is a dead tactic with the focus on holding central objectives and denying your opponent secondaries. Tau aren't costed super well to begin with, and their main problem is they have no CC to help contend objectives from opponents. They're also not particularly fast and thus have issues maintaining and contesting other armies that have board control abilities.

 Grimskul wrote:

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Wait, back up. Tau are/were broken? When? How?

Have you played 9th edition? Tau are basically bottom of the barrel because castling is a dead tactic with the focus on holding central objectives and denying your opponent secondaries. Tau aren't costed super well to begin with, and their main problem is they have no CC to help contend objectives from opponents. They're also not particularly fast and thus have issues maintaining and contesting other armies that have board control abilities.

On top of that Fly no longer lets them fall back and shoot, so if you tag a battlesuit it's out of the game, the board has shrunken, so the Tau have a hard time avoiding melee, and the meta has shifted dramatically to tough aggro-melee because of the king-of-the-hill objectives.

T'au are good at shooting right? So geez, make them BS3+ already! There's a start.

just play them with salamnder rules as marine unit count as.

NeoAigaion wrote:
T'au are good at shooting right? So geez, make them BS3+ already! There's a start.

I've actually been advocating for Suits to gain BS3+

Tau need to make more use of this editions shooting rules.

They need suits with flamers & other short-ranged guns, which have rules allowing them to shoot in CC like vehicles do.

They should have pistols added to their units, even if it is to give their basic guns a "pistol" profile in addition the their usual which allows them to shoot in CC.

It would be good to give some suits "Assault Protocols" (pulling names out my backside so adjust to suit T'au) where they can use their ranged weapons in CC, as if they were close combat weapons with the number of attacks, strength and AP of the guns. so these units could move, shoot, then assault by shooting again. kind of like shoot twice, but with the disadvantage of using WS instead of BS and allowing them to hit back. On suits with flamers, it could be pretty dangerous.

To fix the fact that T'au are so slow, I would suggest bumping Devilfish movement up to 16"/10"/6" instead of the current 12/6/3. I think this makes sense, given that they're literally FLYING TRANSPORTS.

I would like to see Crisis Suits, Stealth Suits, and Ghostkeels regain the ability to move AFTER shooting like they had in 7th edition. I think this would be overpowered for Riptides.

Also, the static battlesuits (Broadsides, Stormsurge) are effectively crippled by the fact that they 1) can't move fast, 2) have effectively zero close combat ability, 3) cannot Fall Back and shoot, and 4) have to deal with a much smaller (and more crowded) battlefield. I don't think that even free overwatch is going to be a solution for those units. Maybe giving Pathfinders the same 12" anti-deepstrike aura that Infiltrators have would help this problem.

However, all of these are just quick reactions to the current situation. I don't even play T'au - my 3rd son does.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:

I've actually been advocating for Suits to gain BS3+

Moving smaller suits to BS3, and allowing Battlesuit to function as Monster or Vehicle for the purposes of Big Guns Never Tire would be a decent start. On top of that though, Markerlights as a whole need a rework. They're an outdated mechanic that simply doesnt work for 9th.

1) All non-HQ battlesuits go to BS3+

2) All Jetpack suits get JSJ back. Tweak base movement stats to compensate but also make second movement consistent with base movement rather than rolled for. So if a crisis suit went to 6" base movement it would be guaranteed a 6" move in the assault phase if that move is not used to assault another unit (in which case it has to roll 2d6" as normal). Vectored Retro Thrusters become a standard suit wargear option again which allows for suits equipped with them to fall back from combat and still shoot. Tau players now have a choice to play high risk and maximise guns or to plan for getting caught and sacrifice a hardpoint for the thrusters to allow them to escape and shoot. Ideally see a mix where the thruster equipped suits run interference for the other suits to intercept enemy units, giving the other suits the time to fall back before disengaging.

3) Revert the markerlights back to tokens you can spend to gain benefits (c'mon GW, you can even make money by selling official tokens!):
i) Improve BS of shooting unit by 1 per token spent, to a minimum of 2+ to hit before modifiers
ii) Ignore Negative To Hit modifier (2 tokens)
iii) -1 to save bonus provided by cover per token spent to a minimum of 0 (so no going into negative modifiers provided by cover)
iv) Fire a seeker missile (autohits as you have already had to hit with the markerlight, ignores LOS requirements from the unit which carries the missile, 2 tokens, can only be used once per unit selected to shoot)
v) Allow targeting of enemy character even if not closest enemy (not sure how many tokens this should take as markerlights would already need to be put into a position where they can target the character model in the first place so requires some careful planning on the Tau players part)

So if you are shooting with a unit of Fire Warriors at some marines in hard cover with a -1 to hit modifier due to some ability, you can spend 2 tokens to get to BS2+, 2 token to ignore the -1 to hit, and 2 tokens to remove the save bonus of the hard cover.

4) Tau Plasma Rifle goes to Rapid Fire 1 S7 AP-2 R:30" D1. Imperium plasma rifles gained overcharge and lost Gets Hot on the base profile. That was a double whammy to the Tau plasma rifle which was meant to be slightly lower powered in exchange for safety. If Imperium guns are now safe at S7, then so should Tau rifles.

5) Change the designation of the new Broadside model. It is not based on the XV8 chassis, it should not have the XV88 designation, dagnabbit

6) Give Commanders actual command abilities which are not once per game. Make them more than gunboats.

7) Broadside Railguns go to Heavy 1 S10 AP-4 D:d6+2 with a mortal wound if they roll a 6 for damage

8) Hammerhead Railguns go to Heavy 1 S12 AP-6 D:d6+4 with d3 mortal wounds if they roll a 6 for damage. Submunition round is Heavy 2d3 S6 AP-1 D1 Blast or something like that.

Just NO to 1 shot railguns, 1 million time no to your rail gun suggestions they are worse that what GW have done in the FW index.

S7vrs S6 really doesn't matter as much as you think being D2 would be way more effective improvement and would also keep plasma as the marine killer it's supposed to be.

Plasma isn't supposed to be hunting vehicals.

Put about 30 seconds of thought into the railgun issue. Ice_can is right - with BS 4+, 1 shot railguns are steaming hot garbage in the dumpster fire that is the current T'au army.

I'd suggest going really crazy with them, because when you're adjusting fire, you make big changes.

Hammerhead railgun:
Heavy 1 S12 AP-5 D: 2D6 (take the highest) +2
Mortal wound on a natural 6 to wound.
Re-roll 1's to wound.

The railgun has to charge for a turn before it can fire, but when it fires it's BS2 and re-rolls 1's to hit. So you'll get 2 shots in an entire battle, but they'll hit 35/36 times for average of 4 damage. Now you get a guaranteed distraction carnifex in your backfield that you can protect with drones.

Same rules for the Broadside Railgun but diminished stats like A Town Called Malus suggested:

Heavy 1 S10 AP-4 D:d6+2
ortal wound if they roll a 6 for damage.

Broadsides obviously get 2 shots. I guess they lose the "re-roll 1's to wound" rule, so they aren't as guaranteed.

Again, just 30 seconds of thought went into the idea. I literally spent more time typing than thinking about this one. Something about it seems off, so I probably missed some important concepts. Please share if you have better ideas.

My son and I are going to play-test the suggestions I made above in some battles between my Marines and his T'au to see how it works out.

EDIT: hmm, a more careful analysis of this idea makes me think it's complete garbage, since even shooting the Railhead at a T6 target with BS2 re-rolling 1s and re-rolling 1s to wound you would only cause damage 90% of the time, and could still do a mere 3 damage on bad rolls. Single shot railguns really are super-hard to balance...

Gw has made tyem almost exclusively Heavy 2 weapons in the FW update

Heavy 2 S10 Ap-4 D d3+3 (MW on a successful wound)

I'm not good at statistics, but I'd say they should be costed better. I doubt that a Heavy 2 S10 AP-4 D: D3+3 with a MW on a 6 weapon is significantly better than a Multimelta. The Broadside Heavy Rail Rifle definitely isn't worth the 25 points it costs right now.

 dadx6 wrote:
I'm not good at statistics, but I'd say they should be costed better. I doubt that a Heavy 2 S10 AP-4 D: D3+3 with a MW on a 6 weapon is significantly better than a Multimelta. The Broadside Heavy Rail Rifle definitely isn't worth the 25 points it costs right now.

Well, you have to factor in the range advantage of not having to get close and how S10 does mean you're wounding most tough targets on 3's, whereas multi-meltas are potentially wounding on 4's against T8 vehicles. The main problem is that eradicators exist which frankly blow out most anti-tank options out of the water from other factions.

Experimented with all four ideas today.

In brief:
- Re-added the Jump-shoot-jump ability for battlesuits.
- Gave pathfinders the 12" "no deepstrike" rule.
- Upgraded the Devilfish to 16/10/6" movement.
- Used the 0CP "use anytime" Strategem "When the Last Warrior Falls."

T'au beat my Space Marines. To be fair to me, I was playing a Space Marine army list that was much more choppy than shooty, and that's not where my gift lies. But it wasn't very close, really. I'm not sure that the T'au rule additions would bring T'au up to the level of Space Marines, but I think they would make T'au very dangerous in the hands of a skilled player. Close Combat would be something you'd have to think VERY CAREFULLY about when they can overwatch for free and shoot when you kill one of their units.

Interesting array of suggestions. My thoughts:

Pathfinders get a penalty to be hit in cover (not negated by anti-cover bonus traits) because squishyness is their issue imo.

Battlesuits may fire non-heavy/blast weapons in melee at -1BS or flamers at d3 hits. Vehicles can already do so with non-blast anyways, and it's less different than getting retreat back or forcing the enemy to suffer multiple overwatches to catch up.

Agree with earlier poser about master of war being passive movement bonus, the idea of a 2nd stage on activation is also cool.

Markerlights can fire into combat. Negating cover bonus not removing unique effects (it's just un-fun across all iterations in the game).

Plasma catches up with imperial. Ours is fairly inexpensive but is serving less and less niche with marines getting more wounds.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
1)
3) Revert the markerlights back to tokens you can spend to gain benefits (c'mon GW, you can even make money by selling official tokens!):
i) Improve BS of shooting unit by 1 per token spent, to a minimum of 2+ to hit before modifiers
ii) Ignore Negative To Hit modifier (2 tokens)
iii) -1 to save bonus provided by cover per token spent to a minimum of 0 (so no going into negative modifiers provided by cover)
iv) Fire a seeker missile (autohits as you have already had to hit with the markerlight, ignores LOS requirements from the unit which carries the missile, 2 tokens, can only be used once per unit selected to shoot)
v) Allow targeting of enemy character even if not closest enemy (not sure how many tokens this should take as markerlights would already need to be put into a position where they can target the character model in the first place so requires some careful planning on the Tau players part)

So if you are shooting with a unit of Fire Warriors at some marines in hard cover with a -1 to hit modifier due to some ability, you can spend 2 tokens to get to BS2+, 2 token to ignore the -1 to hit, and 2 tokens to remove the save bonus of the hard cover.

Personal preference: I don't like "spending" markerlight tokens. Just seems odd from a fluff standpoint. Is someone... using up the glow around the target/the targeting data in the fire team's shared network? Plus, spending markerlights rather than sharing them creates a weird scaling issue where your army needs more and more markerlights in order to buff all of its heavy hitters. By letting your army "share" markerlights (not spend them), then a couple markerlights here and there can give your whole army buffs. Extra markerlights just become a source of redundancy, flexibility (targeting more enemy units), or higher number of markerlights on the main target you care about.

Also, isn't item ii sort of redundant with item i? Unless your opponent is putting a -3 to hit on a single unit, it's equally efficient to just spend 2 tokens to cancel out the to-hit penalty and a 3rd token to get a +1. Stacking up AP penaltis also seems like it could run into issues. Unless your opponent has a really specific Toughness value, doesn't this mean that a few markerlights can make plasma guns redundant next to regular pulse weapons?

The targeting characters thing also seems a bit messy. Given that characters have to stand next to units/vehicles for proteciton this edition, wouldn't it generally be easier to just light up their protector unit and kill them until the character is exposed? For perspective, sniping at a character with a single weapon once per phase is a 2CP strat for drukhari.

But to each their own.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 dadx6 wrote:

The railgun has to charge for a turn before it can fire, but when it fires it's BS2 and re-rolls 1's to hit. So you'll get 2 shots in an entire battle, but they'll hit 35/36 times for average of 4 damage. Now you get a guaranteed distraction carnifex in your backfield that you can protect with drones.

I like the bones of this idea. The single shot railhead attack really should "feel" like a big deal. If there's a place in the game for a gun that does a lot of damage with a single shot, this is it. What about letting it fire a weaker profile (similar to what it has now) without charging, but you can forego shooting to charge up and use the over the top profile on the following turn? That way, you're potentially using it more than twice a game, but you can stagger your shooting (especially on turns when you lack a prime target) to get more out of it a couple times a game.

I'm actually okay with it being a bit swingy, especially on the to-hit roll. A single shot non-blast weapon probably shouldn't be all that great at hitting zig-zaggers or invisible targets. But to get rid of some of the swing, what if you did something like...

Standard Profile: Strength 10, Ap-5, Damage 3+d3
Submunition Profile: As-is.
Charged-Up Profile: Strength X, AP-5, Damage 6; this weapon automatically wounds regardless of the to-wound roll. On a to-wound roll of 4+, the target takes d6 mortal wounds in addition to any other damage. You may only use this profile when this weapon has been charged-up.

So you still might miss the shot, but markerlight support and Kau'Yon actually make us pretty good at hitting things. And then you don't have any chance of fumbling the to-wound roll. The mortal wounds do mean that you'd be bypassing defences that aren't based on force-fields (eldar hologram trickery, daemons ignoring physics, etc.). As a drukhari player, I feel like the shock wave caused by the charged up shot could reasonably rip some plating (or crew) off of my vehicles. And knowing that my opponent had to give up a round of shooting on an expensive platform to get that shot off, I'd be reasonably okay having that profile shot at me.

With a sufficiently high points cost, this would make the hammerhead an investment, and not a particularly durable one, but it would have enough offense to be worth considering all the same.

I would personally change the "charging up" mechanic so it can be used if the Hammerhead remains stationary in the preceding movement phase, rather than wasting a turn. Additionally, how is it going to cause D6 Mortals on a 4+ to wound if it wounds automatically?

What was that thing the Tau Empire was famous for again? Incorporating client species?

There is so much potential for this. Diversify the Kroot Range. Introduce new meele specialist races. Unlike Primaris, you don't even need to screw up the established lore - because it's already established lore that the Tau incorporate new races into their military all the time. We even know for a fact that they have taken at least one race of very potent psykers under their wing (Nicassar).

Really, this could be solved so easily if GW hadn't decided that new Tau releases are to be exclusively about EKSBOEKSHUEG ranged combat battle suits some time ago.

@wyldhunt

Those profiles are very weak. Against a leman Russ:
Standard: 2.2 damage per turn
Charged: 4 damage + 1.75 mw every 2 turns = 2.9 damage per turn (though not sure how the mw happen without a wound roll)

Whereas a similarly priced quad las pred does 5.2 damage per turn.

You would need to double the damage profiles to make the gun as good as a tank that marine players consider lower tier.

 Esmer wrote:
What was that thing the Tau Empire was famous for again? Incorporating client species?

There is so much potential for this. Diversify the Kroot Range. Introduce new meele specialist races. Unlike Primaris, you don't even need to screw up the established lore - because it's already established lore that the Tau incorporate new races into their military all the time. We even know for a fact that they have taken at least one race of very potent psykers under their wing (Nicassar).

Really, this could be solved so easily if GW hadn't decided that new Tau releases are to be exclusively about EKSBOEKSHUEG ranged combat battle suits some time ago.

I think this is the answer. The T'au themselves should remain the shooty part of the army; add in Kroot for a choppy part, and (variations of) Krootox for a 'heavy choppy' part. Maybe a couple others to fill some other roles, and you can get somewhere close to making them viable in the midfield scrap.

I like the Kroot. My 16-year-old son who plays the T'au LOVES the Kroot. He wants them to be the answer.

GW has clearly decided that having the T'au have a choppy option is not where they want to go. So we tried to come up with solutions that used what the T'au are good at: Shooting.

I have no problem with seeing the Kroot changed to be almost as dangerous as Genestealers. 7" move, S4, 2 Attacks base with +1 from Kroot Rifles, and the ability to regain 1 wound or recover a model after any turn (phase?) in which they kill an enemy model in close combat. That won't change the fact that they have lousy saves and just won't be able to get into close combat without other tricks, since they can't ride in any T'au transports. Even adding some kind of "move through cover" like they used to have won't save them, since Dense Cover, Light Cover, and whatever the other thing is will only give them -1 to be hit and +1 save. Even with an extra +1 to save for some kind of "hide in the trees" ability you'll be hard-pressed to get them somewhere survivable. They'll be very much an edge case.

As unpalatable as it is, a good solution to the T'au problem is the ability to shoot in the close combat phase.

I think, anyway.